Honoring a Hall of Fame wife

By

When Bob Toski began playing PGA Tour events in the early ‘50s, he hated being away from his new bride, Jacqueline. He wrote her all kinds of “love letters” from the road, correspondence she treasured. He once wrote her three letters in a single day. And “Lynn” saved them all, they meant so much to her.

Lynn died last week at 80, heart failure finally taking her after a long illness.

Bob, a Hall of Fame teacher who was the PGA Tour’s leading money winner in 1954, didn’t have to tell his four children how much he loved their mother when they came together for her funeral service last Friday. After seeing it through the years, now they can go back and re-live it.

Karin Toski, Bob and Lynn’s youngest child and only daughter, huddled with two leather-bound books this week. Lynn bound all those love letters she got from Bob on the road into books. They’re also there for Bob’s sons – Robert, Bruce and Scot – to read in the family’s time together this week at Bob and Lynn’s home in Boca Raton, Fla.

“It isn’t sad reading the letters,” Karin said. “It’s comforting and sweet that they meant so much to my mother that she bound them in leather books. It’s phenomenal how much my father loved my mother.”

Go back and read stories about Toski, and you’ll see that he always said he took up teaching and gave up the PGA Tour because he couldn’t stand being away from his wife and children. The Toskis were preparing to celebrate their 57th wedding anniversary on Dec. 14th.

Folks who want to honor Lynn’s memory can do so with a donation in her name to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital (www.stjude.org).

Tags:

Mell, a senior writer, is a 30-year veteran and covers the PGA and LPGA tours for Golf Channel.